Flirtations

Looking through the screen door I noticed something different moving among the grass and flowers. 

I went outside. 

A blue-headed Tom Turkey was trying to impress somebody.

As he moved farther into the open he definitely impressed me!

Soon there were more but where is the hen?

Oh, there she is.  Do you see her?

They are almost too far away for me to focus clearly but it is close enough for me to see that those are pretty long beards.

They continued their courting ritual throughout the morning, entertaining my husband and me from a distance.

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November Apologies to Tom

It is November, right?

I'm sorry, but is anyone else thinking, "mashed potatoes and gravy" as these turkeys lope through the rain across our hay field?

Uh-oh. Did you fellows hear someone mention "gravy"?

Wildlife

       I My most recent walk was Saturday  morning.  A heavy fog left everything wet again. I put on my old tennis shoes, knowing they would be drenched and headed to the woods.  Today's post is all about fauna.  I'll later take you to see the flora from this morning's walk. It started with this somewhat wild chipmunk who stood very still as I approached it,  holding out until the very last second hope that I couldn't see it if it didn't move a muscle. It blinked as my camera led me forward until the chipmunk could longer take it . . .

. . . it quivered a bit.  I gave it the relief it sought by turning my head slightly so that it felt safe enough to dart through the front door of its burrow.

Smiling I walked on, pushing the stray blackberry brier away with  my walking stick.  This is an area next to the New Woods where the land is gradually becoming reclaimed after being roughly timbered then mostly cleared and replanted.  As is typical Common mullein is one of the early plants (other mullein post HERE) In this part of West Virginia we typically see Great or Common mullein (Verascum thapsus) growing along the road in spots where nothing els will grow or where the cover has been mowed or weed-eated down to bare ground. (Yes, the much more efficient "weed-eated" seems to be the most accepted past and past perfect form around here, not "weed-eaten" or "weed-ate.")

But this post is about fauna, not flora so here is what we saw:

An tiny caterpillar starting its day confidently walking the downy edge of a Mullein leaf, still damp with a heavy morning dew. What the caterpillar was will become is as unknown to me as knowing what I will become. Perhaps it will be one of these, below.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could google ourselves and see the stages of our life, including what we will become.  It would have to include the correct steps we would have to take to reach each stage because, unlike a moth or butterfly, we don't usually act according to plan.  Our freedom to choose sometimes keeps us from flying.

This next bit of life confused me.  I hope some of you know the answer to flora or fauna.  

At first I thought it was a bit of seed floating by, then a small spider.

It seemed to float freely on the faintest breeze. If you are a photographer then you know how much fun it was trying to catch a floating object about the size of grain of rice. 

I even tried to catch one and hold it in my hand but it blew off quickly and with my zoom lens on the camera, I was too close. On closer inspection It looked like it may have been a piece of lichen, that life form somewhere between flora and fauna or perhaps some other fungus that blew off out of the tree tops.  I had been seeing them along my path for about a half hour of exploring. It was a curled up thing.  Each one caught looked almost the same as the previous one which makes me think that it is some tiny animal that travels on the late summer breeze.  

My eyes failed me in their ability to see the tiny being clearly but one left me with a message of love - according to the eye of my imagination.

Don't close this window yet, though.  There were some larger animals for us to see.

I found these bowls dug out of the dirt.

 What do you think made them?

There is a clue at the edge of one of the bowls . . .

 and a bigger clue by another.

 Looks like a turkey feather to me.

Even a bigger clue was this fellow.

Watching me as I solved the mystery was a plump red squirrel.

Then for all you readers that don't get to see many groundhogs, I had to add this young one living along the edge of the hay field.

Like that chipmunk at the top of this post, the groundhog stood its ground until I looked away, allowing it to crouch down

Then dive into its hole

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Trespassing

Today I have been a trespasser.  I, recklessly, have crossed the boundaries of my land to move onto my neighbor's woodland acres. I'm hoping that the kindness of Jim allows him to forgive me.  This is how it happened. 


I take medicine in the morning that prescribes me to wait one hour before eating. It was finally not too cold out so I put on my hooded sweatshirt, draped binoculars and a camera around my neck, put another camera in my pocket and my phone in another pocket.  My plan was to go into my garden then spend some time re-learning how to identify some common birds. I would find a place to sit quietly and search for birds.

Then I decided to just go out the gate to walk along the edge of the field where a pair of Towhees scratch. A White-throated sparrow led me along the wood's edge to where I had to make a decision.  I chose to turn left away from my home.  For a moment I quietly paused to look past the tree house through a small strip of trees into the hay field beyond.


Birds kept calling me onward until I was walking on the gas line and deciding to go check if there were any frogs in a wet spot I remembered from last year. Next thing I know, I can see the neighbor's gravel road off in the distance.  I had not been on the road since the gas company had graveled it so that they could get their equipment through the woods in an effort to cap some old wells. Naturally I wanted to check out the road. I followed 
it and sure 'nuf, it lead to one of the capped wells. The hills around here are covered with old gas wells from the early twentieth century. The gas companies abandoned them once they no longer produced gas. Our government - with our tax dollars - is now finding the wells and capping them.
One step led to another as I found myself being pulled toward the old home site that I described about a year ago. I think of it every spring. You may click HERE to read it for yourself.
For reasons you can read about at the link above I haven't been out there in awhile but perhaps it was time.  Even though the road has changed as has the vegetation I knew just where it was.  At that spot I turned deeper into the woods. At one time cedars lined the drive leading up to the house that has been gone over a hundred years. Today briars protect the site.  Like the prince in the old Rose Red and Sleeping Beauty fairy tails, I tried to force my way through an army  of briars.  Multiflora rose branches pulled at my pants and caught my sweatshirt.  This wasn't working.  My new strategy was to go around the bushes and approach the site from a different angle.  Still too hard. While crawling on the ground in an attempt to go under the bushes, I heard a sound behind me. . .eeek!  Slowly I slid backward and stood up. There was the sound again.  It was too slow for a deer who would have snorted and run by now. What was it? Then, coming right toward me was a turkey.  
I saw several more behind it.  While I slowly pulled my camera up to my eye, the turkey finally noticed me and did an "about-face" before I could take its picture.

Once it turned, so did all the rest.  They ran then flew away.

I turned back to the task of crawling under the multiflora rose bushes. Finally through, I then maneuvered through a maze of grape vines until there I was.  I was standing on a forest floor covered in periwinkle. This periwinkle had been planted more than a century ago when none of the surrounding trees were standing. Some of it still bloomed blue though buried beneath a mulch of debris.

I kept searching through the vines until I saw what made my heart race and my eyes water. There they were, her daffodils, still blooming though the woman who planted them has long returned to dust.

It was just one clump that I found at first.  From a bulb planted by that long gone ancestor of my friend.  She had gently placed  the bulb in the ground, covered it with dirt and waited. It is an act most of us have done, an act that connects us to women through time. We plant, nurture and enjoy the beauty of what we have started.

As I wandered on I came into a clearing with more bulbs growing.

I've never understood why brush doesn't grow in this ancient front yard.

Was it because it was trampled by children, dogs and horses or is it because the ground is sacred. A family of our pioneer settlers sat in this yard, enjoying the daffodils, the yucca,

and the view.  What a view it must have been . . . looking down the river with no buildings in sight.

I enjoyed thinking about what had passed before me then decided I needed to get home.  My detour had left me very hungry.  I didn't look forward to fighting my way out of the surrounding briar bushes.  I didn't have to.  One of those roads built to cap off wells had been built right in close to the home site.  I stepped out of the past and onto a gravel path homeward.

Oh well, my way was more exciting.

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Face the Wind

Communication is one of those things we don't miss until we don't have it.  I take for granted the quick connection available by picking up a telephone or turning on the computer.  This past Saturday at 4:12 am, Our electric went out and about the same time, our phone line broke.  The phone line had broken two winters ago but was spliced by a repairman who said it was only a temporary "fix." The line needed replaced.  Well, he had the temporary part correct.  The splice came apart in the weekend's wet heavy snowfall.  I still had my cell phone, so all was well enough.  The phone line now repaired again, on the ground covered by a few inches of snow, but the internet is up and running so we're happy.

The house was dark and quiet Saturday so it seemed a great time to bundle up and head out into the storm.
While wind blew biting snow into my face I walked across fields and through the woods to see what nature had to offer.  I kept going forward in the happy knowledge that the return trip would find the wind at my back, giving my face some respite.

The heavy wet snow stuck to tree branches, bending them toward the ground and holding them in place as the wind moved around gray trunks laying a cold white stripe on the windward side of each.

This dogwood in the left photo became a white specimen more thickly flocked than any tree in the miniature snow scenes of my Christmas memories.

The stark contrast of dark trunks appeared to have come from an artist's pallet after dipping her twisted brush tip into black then pulling upward in long thin strokes.

Here and there bits of color stood out amid the black and white landscape shown below in the green of lichen clinging to the bark of an oak tree.

It was already noon yet I had not yet seen any tracks other than my own to mar the snow.  I cautiously passed under the treehouse, its roof laden with extra pounds of wet snow. I didn't want this to be the moment it decided to let go of the giant dead tree to which it clung.

As I looked over the hill top into the community below I saw our pond, not quite frozen and empty of the neighbor's ducks that often visit, sifting its muddy edges for a meal.
Little stirred below. Only a few cars ventured up the highway, their drivers intent on whatever mission drove them out of their warm blanketed homes.

I made a detour through the trees to check out any action in the hawk's nest.  Seeing none, I turned and headed back across the white plane, my face happily turned away from the driving wind. Hot chocolate sounded real nice. I would make a cup of chocolate milk, put it in the microwave and  . . . .oh, that would take electric, wouldn't it?

PS:  I couldn't resist showing you this flock of turkeys in a persons yard that I passed yesterday.  Where were they? You may not believe me, but they were on the aptly named Turkeyfoot Road.

Enjoy your day!